Tag Archives: Gettysburg National Military Park

Linked in/Neat stuff: Brodbecks Community Band/Harley ‘Knucklehead’ Remember these days when whistlemaster Don Ryan operated the York Factory Whistle in the narrow hallway at New York Wire? Well, that’s just one of many changes in the annual Christmas morning concert … Continue reading →

Slowly, the terrain in Gettysburg where the old Cyclorama building and visitors center stood for decades is returning to its Civil War state. In this case, its post-Civil War state as the marker for the Battery F, U.S Artillery is returned to where it first went up in 1907. It was moved when the Cyclorama building was constructed in 1962. How do you re-install a granite monument? Check out this Hanover Evening Sun photo gallery.

Check out these new and improved stocks at the Colonial Courthouse in York, courtesy of Boy Scout Troop 20 and the York County Heritage Trust’s Facebook page. The pillories have long been a popular part of the replica along the Codorus. Of course, the real stocks in the original courthouse were not popular – with criminals. Sentences were stiff in those days. According to ‘Nine Months in York Town,’ crowds loved them, jeering and throwing rotten eggs at the criminals so confined. He would choke on dust kicked up by passing wagons. Courts ordered officials to cut off the ears of some criminals and nail them to the pillory. One doesn’t have to stand in this replica pillory for very long to understand that crime did not pay in the mid-1700s.

The western gate to Gettysburg borough, marked by Robert E. Lee’s headquarters, will look far different in a future visit to Gettysburg. That key entry into Gettysburg will lose the familiar Appalachian Brewing Company and Quality Inn. The Civil War Trust will pay $5.5 million and transfer the property to the National Park Service,

YorkTownSquare tracks bad weather/bad geological days throughout York County’s history. We’ve covered floods and droughts and earthquakes and blizzards (see the result of such a heavy snow below). But not fog, up to now. With our hills and valleys and waterways, we have a share of those low-hanging clouds. Such as this week, when a fog advisory was in effect. Here, two people cross the Codorus Creek on the Princess Street Bridge.

Love these photo galleries of the year, this one from the Hanover Evening Sun’s gallery. This one, of course, points back to the padlocking of the Gettysburg National Military Park, specifically Soldiers’ National Cemetery.

Now that’s more like it. These scenes are playing out all over the re-opened Gettysburg Battlefield – reopened, that is, after the government shutdown ended. Shrewsbury’s Fred Luther is behind the camera at the Virginia Monument to capture Franklin, Pa.’s, Rob and Tina Wolbert’s moment at Gettysburg National Military Park.

Yes, you’ll not see Gettysburg National Military Park this empty, blocked off and downright lonely. The U.S. government shutdown is the culprit. The Hanover, Pa., Evening Sun, which put up a Media Center gallery of the military park that included these photos, reports that 76 full-time park service employees are furloughed. All this in the 150th anniversary of the battle.

This is the earliest known edition of the German-language Die York Gazette, ancestor of the York, Pa., Daily Record/Sunday News. Newspapers, indeed, have changed their look since 1796. Sometimes change is hard for readers, but if papers didn’t change, they’d would still look like this.

Alonzo Cushing’s story begins like this: ‘Gen. George Pickett’s Division advanced on Cemetery Ridge on the afternoon of July 3, 1863, and the booming guns in Battery A of the 4th U.S. Artillery started to go silent as the men assigned to them were killed. Lt. Alonzo Cushing, a 22-year-old from Wisconsin who had graduated from West Point two years earlier, watched his men die around him.

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About York Town Square

Welcome to York Town Square, 9 years of daily posts about journalism and history, topics that can easily become plodding and self important. My goal is to keep this blog fun and accessible. And I try to say something in each post. I welcome your comments and respond to every one you write. Please contact me at jem@ydr.com.